1. Field of the Disclosure
The technology of the disclosure relates generally to fiber optic network devices, and more particularly to connection of fiber optic terminals to a fiber optic network.
2. Technical Background
Optical fiber is increasingly being used for a variety of broadband applications including voice, video and data transmissions. As a result of the ever-increasing demand for broadband communications, telecommunication and cable media service providers and/or operators are expanding their fiber optic networks to increase their networks' capacity and reach to provide more services, applications and information to more proximate and distant subscribers. To facilitate this capacity and reach, the fiber optic networks employ additional fiber optic cable, hardware and components resulting in increased installation time, cost and maintenance. This can result in the fiber optic networks becoming more complex, requiring architectures that allow for the most efficient delivery of fiber optic service to the subscriber. These architectures typically employ fiber optic network devices, such as fiber optical terminals, for example, in branches of the fiber optic network. The fiber optic network devices act to optically interconnect the fiber optic cables of the branch, separate or combine optical fibers in multi-fiber cables, and/or split or couple optical signals, as may be necessary.
For example, a multi-fiber feeder cable from a central office or a transport cable from a head end may connect to multiple multi-fiber distribution cables. Each distribution cable then may extend to a designated geographic area, thereby providing the optical service to subscribers in that area. A fiber optic drop cable from the subscriber premises may connect to the distribution cable to establish optical connectivity between the service provider and the subscriber in a fiber to the premises (FTTP) optical network. However, extending the drop cable from the subscriber premises all the way to the distribution cable may require a substantial length of drop cable resulting in extensive cost and installation time. Moreover, the cost and installation time would be increased and compounded if a separate connection to the distribution cable was needed for each drop cable.
To reduce attendant cost and timing, one or more intermediate optical connection points between the distribution cable and the drop cable may be incorporated. To incorporate the intermediate optical connection points, a branch of the fiber optic network off of the distribution cable is established. The branch may be established at a branching point on the distribution cable, such as at a mid-span access location. In situations where there are many subscriber premises to be served by one mid-span access location, more than one fiber optic terminal in the branch from that one mid-span access location may be needed. This is particularly applicable where the subscriber premises are separated by appreciable distances, for example in rural areas. In such case, given the above-mentioned configuration of the fiber optic terminals and due to the dedicated branch (stub) cable, a separate branch with associated branch cables may have to be extended from the mid-span access location to each fiber optic terminal. Similar to the drop cable situation, the cost of the branch cable is generally charged on a per foot installed basis. Accordingly, installing separate branch cables from one mid-span access location to each fiber optic terminal may be excessively costly and time consuming.
As such, the current configurations of the fiber optic terminal and connecting cable assemblies between the fiber optic terminals may prohibit the feasibility of designing and using effective distributive hierarchical branching architectures as the FTTP optical network extends toward the subscriber premises.